Multiple Choice Learning

Rebecca, my granddaughter attends a high school located in a Chicago suburb. A few nights ago she was relating to us what was going on in her classes. She mentioned that, in a particular class, her grade should have been higher because the test she took wasn’t scored right. She said that she had changed an answer on her Scantron machine-scored multiple choice answer sheet, but it had been marked wrong just the same by the machine because, the teacher said, “You didn’t use a good enough eraser.”

I asked Rebecca how many of the teachers used Scantron sheets in testing and she responded “All the quizzes and tests in every class except for math are given using the Scantron.” She continued “Except for Finals Exams - We get to write an essay along with doing the Scantron sheets.” One of her teachers even gave her class “a tour of the Scantron room” once to show how her tests were graded. My granddaughter, who wants to be a teacher, was much impressed.

Rebecca said using these kinds of tests by all her teachers was done to get students ready to take the ACT tests. As background, the ACTs are a major component of the Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE) given to all 11th graders in Illinois. The PSAE is the NCLB high school component in Illinois. The PSAE includes three components; the one that is reported most in newspapers are the ACT battery of four multiple-choice tests (English, mathematics, reading, and science). The other major NCLB test in Illinois called the Illinois Standards Achievement Test is also composed of multiple choice tests. There is a writing component to both tests, but only limited ones.

On a related note, this morning I caught David Martin, the CBS News' National Security Correspondent, on C-Span discussing his job. He said that trying to find the truth was a “messy” thing as he described various approaches he uses to discover what he “approximates to be the truth” in an issue.

If the issues of the world refuse to be classified into neat little boxes and stay messy, then perhaps we can teach students that sometimes there is no one correct answer. We can teach our students that the choices they make must relate to all the issues, perspectives, needs, facts, and theories related to the problems faced, and to possible consequences of actions they must consider doing. We can teach our students to contribute solutions to problems through collaborative communities. We can help them to learn for themselves through developing a culture of learning in schools that is not irrelevant to the real world.

However, if students are continued to be tested in ways that describe thinking reflected by multiple choice tests, I pray that the world changes so that all the problems are no longer “messy”. In this kind of world, the biggest issues Rebecca and all other young adults face would be to have sharp pencils and good enough erasers.

Image Copyright Daryl Cargel; used with permission